


:)

by embep



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:26:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24128116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embep/pseuds/embep
Summary: about smiles
Kudos: 12
Collections: Women! Wanted Zine: Flash Fics





	:)

**Author's Note:**

> written as an exercise on the Women Wanted Zine server!! the prompt was "smile" and i knew immediately that i needed to write something about toko ;;

A smile can be many things. Toko learns this quickly. A smile can be anything. 

It can be a greeting. When she sees people on the street, they grin at her as she passes, and their smiles say,  _ hello, it’s good to see you. _ A smile can also be an answer. She smiles back to say,  _ it’s good to see you, too. _

A smile can be kind. There are some people she’s never spoken to in town, but she knows that they must be kind, because she sees it in their smiles. They can be gentle, resting reserved just on the corners of the lips, or they can be boisterous, taking up the entire face. Toko’s mother’s was gentle, but Toko inherited her father’s loud smile. She knows from looking at Komurasaki and all the other courtesans that it’s not the smile she  _ should  _ have, but she loves her father’s smile, and so she loves hers, too.

Working for Komurasaki teaches her that a smile can be sad. There are days when Komurasaki’s smile sits on her lips, still and frozen, offset by glassy eyes and a languid way of moving. “Beautiful,” people comment. “Graceful.” And it’s true. She is. But when Toko watches Komurasaki like that, it makes her heart prickle. It makes her eyes burn and her breath come just a little faster than before.

She doesn’t cry. She couldn’t if she wanted to.

Some days, when she looks at Komurasaki’s smile, she does want to.

There are other smiles, as well. Toko memorizes them all without having to try, storing them away and referencing one against another. People’s faces are like languages, she thinks, and everyone speaks something different with theirs. There are happy smiles, and there are cruel smiles. There are smiles that are secrets, shared between the courtesans and their customers sometimes when they forget that she’s there, never to be spoken of.

People smile when they want something. They smile a little different when they don’t want something. They smile when they’re annoyed. They smile when they’re mad. They smile when they’re happy, or when they’re nervous.

A smile can be many things. Toko’s learned this.

Her father smiles as he dies.

A smile can be anything.

Toko smiles as she watches him die.


End file.
